Credit Card Insider Wants Tougher Rules for His Own Industry

Business owners often need quick access to cash, and many turn to a practice called credit card stacking when faced with this need. 

They can either do it themselves or hire a company that helps them apply for several business credit cards at once, often unlocking up to $250,000 in combined credit. 

It’s legal, and it’s common. But over the past few years, the Federal Trade Commission has gone after several companies in this space for lying to customers and breaking the law.

Now one of the industry’s most well-known figures wants to see even tougher penalties for the bad actors, even though he runs a company in this industry.

Meet the man behind the push…

Ari Page has led Fund&Grow, a business credit consulting company, for close to two decades. He says his company has helped tens of thousands of business owners access more than two billion dollars in credit, all without a single FTC enforcement action or CFPB complaint against it. 

Page has become a familiar voice in business media, writing for outlets like Tampa Bay Business & Wealth and appearing on major TV networks like Fox 13 with Blake DeVine, Daily Flash, and others, as well as prominent podcasts like Entrepreneur on Fire. He also recently spoke out against a Trump administration proposal to cap credit card interest rates, warning it could backfire on the very consumers it’s meant to help.

He says he’s watched his industry get a bad reputation because of a small number of companies acting in bad faith. He wants that to change.

What went wrong at other companies

The FTC has taken action against several credit stacking companies in the last few years. 

Seek Capital is one of the biggest examples. The company told customers they were getting business loans, but they were really only getting personal credit cards. A federal judge signed off on a $48 million judgment against Seek Capital and its CEO, who is now permanently banned from the industry. The FTC said many customers didn’t even realize they were paying for credit card applications instead of a loan.

Another company, Seed Consulting, got in trouble for a different reason. It inflated customers’ reported household incomes by more than $100,000 on credit card applications to help them get approved—all without notifying customers of what they were doing. That’s simply fraud, and it cost the company more than $2 million in a settlement.

A few other cases followed a similar pattern. Growth Cave, a business coaching company, added credit stacking as an extra service and ran into trouble for it. Nudge LLC, a real estate training company, partnered with Seed Consulting and got pulled into the fallout too. That case showed the FTC doesn’t just go after the company doing the credit stacking. It goes after everyone connected to the deal.

The rules that keep getting broken

Looking across these cases, a pattern shows up again and again. Companies called their credit cards “loans” or “funding” instead of being upfront about what they were selling. Some promised to “convert credit to cash,” even though that’s against the rules set by Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. Some applied for personal credit cards instead of business cards, which can trigger a federal law called the Credit Repair Organizations Act. That law comes with strict requirements that many of these companies weren’t following.

Page argues these violations aren’t just legal technicalities—they cause real harm. 

A business owner who thinks they’re getting a loan makes different money decisions than someone who knows they’re taking on credit card debt with a variable interest rate. And a personal credit card hurts a person’s individual credit score in a way a business card usually doesn’t.

Building a new standard

Rather than wait around for regulators to fix the problem, Page started something called the Association of Credit Card Stacking Standards, or ACSS. He’s the founding chair, but he didn’t build it alone. Page has already brought several of his own competitors onto the group’s board, as well as Robby H. Birnbaum, an attorney at Greenspoon Marder LLP who specializes in regulatory compliance with FTC and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) regulations.

That’s a notable move. Instead of setting rules just for his own company, Page is trying to get rival firms to agree on a shared standard for the whole industry. If it works the way he describes, it could mean real buy-in from companies that don’t have much reason to help each other otherwise.

The ACSS standards call for companies to be upfront about what they’re selling, to skip personal credit cards entirely, to post their prices online instead of hiding them until a sales call, to walk customers through the terms of every single card before applying, and to educate them that they are personally liable for all debt even though it’s for the business. The group also wants companies to give realistic timelines. Some companies have promised funding in two or three days, but Page says a realistic first round actually takes two to three weeks.

Should the penalties be bigger?

Page’s boldest idea might be his call for harsher punishment. 

He points out that the $48 million judgment against Seek Capital was mostly suspended because the company said it couldn’t pay. Page thinks that lets bad actors off too easy, and he wants penalties that actually stick.

That view puts him in an interesting spot. He’s also been critical of some other government efforts to regulate financial products, like the proposed interest rate cap. So it’s fair to ask what makes credit stacking different in his eyes, and why he thinks tougher enforcement is the right fix here specifically.

Page explains, “I’m generally a free market guy and I’m not a fan of more government regulation, but the reality is that there are some predatory companies in this industry, and they’re putting their clients and their affiliates in a potentially financially devastating position through their actions. Business owners and affiliated companies that want to help their clients are coming to these companies because they see them as ‘the expert,’ and that blind trust hurts them when they follow bad advice. Unfortunately, if they’re not going to self-police, the government has to get more involved to protect consumers.”

What comes next?

It’s still too early to know how much influence the ACSS will have, or whether the FTC will take any of Page’s suggestions into account. But his effort points to something bigger happening across the credit stacking industry. Enforcement actions are starting to pile up, but it seems like at least some companies are trying to improve compliance and clean up the industry to eliminate this kind of behavior industrywide because they know too many companies aren’t as committed to compliance as they are and are taking advantage of consumers today.

For now, business owners considering credit card stacking should ask plenty of questions before signing up with any company. Knowing exactly what they’re buying, whether it’s a credit card or a loan, and how it might affect their personal credit, is the best protection they have.